American presidential debate
Presidential debates have been a feature of every U.S. presidential election since 1976. The first televised debates were in 1960, when four debates were held between Vice President Richard Nixon and Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. After a gap, televised debates resumes in 1976:
Information about this year's presidential debates can be found in the specific article on the 2004 United States Presidential Election Debates.
Presidential debates are held late in the election cycle, after the political parties have nominated their candidates. The candidates meet in a large hall, often a university, before an audience of citizens. The formats of the debates have varied, with questions sometimes posed from one or more journalist moderators and in other cases members of the audience. Debates are televised and broadcast live on the radio. Moderators of nationally televised presidential debates have included Bernard Shaw, Jim Lehrer, and Dan Rather.
Debate Sponsorship
Control of the presidential debates has been a ground of struggle for at least twenty years. The role was filled by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters (LWV) civic organization in 1976, 1980 and 1984. In 1987, the LWV withdrew from debate sponsorship, in protest of the major party candidates attempting to dictate nearly every aspect of how the debates were conducted. On October 2nd, 1988, the LWV's 14 trustees voted unanimously to pull out of the debates, and on October 3rd, they issued a blistering press release:
The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates ... because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.
The two major political parties created the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) to replace the LWV and, in 1988, conducted the debates on exactly the same terms that the LWV deemed fraudulent. The CPD is headed by former chairs of the Republican and Democratic parties. They have controlled the debates in 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000.
In 2004, the Citizens' Debate Commission (CDC) was formed to challenge control by the Democratic and Republican parties and attempt to return the debates to control by an independent, nonpartisan, rather than bipartisan, body. Chief concerns include the CPD's deliberate of third party and independent candidates and shutting out on which there is either bipartisan agreement or complicity in avoiding the topic.
Although have agreed that the CPD is not serving democracy well, as of August 2004, plans are being finalized for the 2004 presidential election debates to be sponsored again by the CPD.
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